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Not By Me, But Still Incredible, and by Daniel O'Brien |
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Well folks, it finally happened. I sold a book to Harlequin Book Publishers’ brand new imprint, Harlequin Teens. Without giving too much away, it’s really a perfect fit for the Teens branch of Harlequin which, according to Harlequin, is designed solely to print books “specifically developed for readers of Twilight.” Yes. An imprint was created strictly to write more books like Twilight, as sales of adult books are down and sales of teen romance novels infused with supernatural elements are way, way up because adults are all switching over to these teen books.
I know what you’re thinking, and I know that nothing about my entire body would suggest that I’m even vaguely interested in Teen Fiction, but the fact is I’ve been wanting to write one of these Magical-Softcore-Pseudoporn books for a long time, for reasons completely unrelated to the fact that the book industry as a whole is dying and books like Twilight and Those Other Twilight Books are the only books that people actually buy any more. Total coincidence, because I truly believe in this book, which is why I’m giving all you folks a special preview. Enjoy!
Synopsis
In a sentence, this is a story about Bonita Ingénue a 15-year-old, misunderstood young woman who gets rescued from her provincial, boring life and whisked away to a fantastical world of exciting, sensual, magic and erotic, thick, penetrating whimsy. At the beginning of our tale, she leaves her hometown of Backstory, Massachusetts for the excitement and intrigue of Excitetrigue, Colorado. The kids at her new school are all impressed with how one dimensional and uninteresting she is and it’s only a matter of time before all of the popular boys ask her out on romantic dates in the hopes fingerblasting her. Even though Bonnie has her pick of the litter at school, she really has her heart set on Theo, the mysterious boy who lives just outside of town in Dragon Hills. Theo has feelings for Bonnie as well, but he also has a deep, dark secret. A deep, dark dragon secret. He is a dragon.
Bonnie accepts Theo for who he is and Theo appreciates how unobtrusive and malleable Bonnie is. Together, and against the wishes of Bonnie’s parents, they get into some pretty graphic ********, and it’s a little bit weird, but beautiful if you just open your mind. Eventually Theo has to leave the town (I forget why) and Bonnie goes along with him and abandons her family (because if there’s anything Twilight tell us, it’s that chicks love sitting passively on the sidelines while violent, mysterious men make absolutely every important decision for them). There’s maybe a hunt at some point but otherwise most of the tail end of the book is more aggressive dragonhumping as Bonnie and Theo live out their days in Theo’s tower, blissfully unaware of the outside world as they enjoy a life that’s all sweat, asses and wings. You’ve heard of fire-breathing dragons, well, Theo is a desire-breathing dragon. (He also breathes fire.)
Sample Chapter
Theo walked slowly, yet purposefully down the halls of the school. In many ways, Theo was somewhat of a paradox, a contained contradiction; he stalked the halls with an ambivalent carelessness, seemingly ignoring the whole of the world around him, and yet he carried himself, somehow with a total natural awareness of his surroundings. When you saw him, you felt as if he couldn’t be reached, as if he was so enveloped in his own world that he couldn’t possibly notice you, but still, he knew somehow precisely where you were and what you were doing and, in Bonita’s case, what she was doing was staring directly at him. There’s something about that boy, Bonita thought but would never dare say. Something different, a kind of focused detachment, if that’s even possible. It wasn’t possible, but independent thought wasn’t one of Bonita’s strong points. Theo’s claws clicked and clacked on the linoleum of the floor, making a sort of “clickity clackity” sound, like the sound of dragon claws on linoleum. Bonita turned to one of the minor characters, a girl one.
“Who is that boy,” Bonita asked. “He is so mysterious, and so different from the other boys.” In the distance, Theo snarled and swung his tail a few times, inadvertently sweeping the legs of a passing student.
“Who, you mean Theo?” Bonita’s friend-person smiled off in the direction of Theo, chewing gum or twirling her hair or something. “Theo’s mysterious. No one knows much about him, but he’s been around forever. He only disappeared once, three years ago, when he drove across country on his motorcycle. He’s so dreamy. He lives just outside of town in Dragon Hills.” If Bonita had responsible parents, they’d have taught her to ask questions like
“Why is he at our school if he doesn’t live in this town?” and “How old must he be if he already had a motorcycle license three years ago, when we were all 12?” Unfortunately, Bonita’s parents really only existed so they could disapprove of her young love, and I can’t even totally remember if she had both parents or if one of them died at some point. And I am not flipping back to check, so you can just forget it.
“Keep dreaming, Bonnie,” Bonita’s friend said. Bonita had never had a nickname before. She reacted with indifference. “Theo doesn’t date anybody. He’s out of everyone’s league. See you in class.” She’s not in the book anymore.
While Bonita’s friend walked off in a direction, Bonita continued to watch the mysterious and mysterious Theo. She still couldn’t quite put her finger on what exactly it was that separated Theo from the other boys, even as she sat watching him blast fire from his gaping mouth. She sat there emotionlessly, drool trickling down her chin, watching Theo for a little while longer. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, but probably wasn’t, Theo approached her, his horns pointing out like dongs atop his head, and his dong, confident and powerful, protruding from his dong-region like a massive horn.
“You must be Bonita,” Theo said, his voice low and warm, and with just a hint of mischief. He sounded the way that drives girls crazy, like an American Idol or an iPod or whatever. His eyes, the color of coals (black), seemed to be staring directly into Bonita’s soul. A warming chill sent sweaty shivers up Bonita’s spine.
“I am,” Bonita said, registering neither shock nor joy at the realization that Theo knew her name.
“I was about to go to lunch,” Theo whispered, his pointed dragon teeth looking like a bunch of finely sharpened dongs. “Are you hungry?”
“No.” I don’t feel like mentioning that my stomach is already full, Bonita thought. Full of butterflies. ******** each other.
“No, I’m sure you’re hungry,” snarled Theo. “Let’s get out of here.”
It’s true, Bonita was hungry. Maybe she didn’t realize it before, or maybe she just needed a strong man in her life to tell her exactly how she felt, but now all she could think about was eating whatever Theo told her to eat.
Over tacos, Theo and Bonita discussed this and that, the things that kids are all nutty about. The Fresh Prince, let’s say.
“I enjoy the way Carlton dances,” Theo said. Bonita agreed, though she’d never particularly felt one way or the other about it in the past and wasn’t sure if she’d ever seen the program, only that she was suddenly all about the way Carlton danced.
“Parents just don’t understand,” Theo said and they both had a good laugh. Theo stared at Bonita, and she at him, and he at her, their eyes burning eyeholes into each other, like a bunch… like this was some kind of… like, a goddamned eye-laser jamboree, I swear to God, like, you don’t even know.
“Dearest,” Theo whispered, his eyes blazing, with whatever color I said they were before, “I wish to take you away from this harsh, oppressive world that seeks only to stifle your warm, seething desires. I ask you, with the clarity only achieved by total passion, to join me, and live with me forever, away from fruitless work of mortals, away from the laws of man, the laws of the ignorant. Join me in my tower, where the only work is the work that I shall do in the service of your whims, where the only laws are those committed to your pleasure, where the only authority to whom you must answer is your heart.” Bonita sat quietly, wondering what about Theo’s wings were different from the wings of the other boys at school.
“I’mma pork you with my dragon tail, is what I’m trying to say,” Theo clarified, mistaking Bonita’s stoic lack of personality for confusion.
“Dragon,” Bonita exclaimed, snapping her fingers. “That’s it, I knew it was something. I’m not sure if I can leave my friends and family.” It was sort of a moot point, because Theo had already taken the mouth-breathing, borderline-catatonic Bonita to his tower while she was trying to figure out tacos, but everything was cool, she didn’t really have a ton of friends at school, or anything. Anyway there’s some dragon ******** in the next chapter, so you should probably stick around.
Chapters:
Prologue: I’m Making Up My Own Rules About Dragons So Go To Hell
1. The Road to Colorado
2. The First Day of School
3. Meeting Theo [See excerpt above.]
4. Theo Has a Secret!
5. He’s a Dragon, Is the Secret
6. Inside Theo’s Tower
7. Seeing An Angel
8. Getting All Up In That Angel
9. Young Hearts
10. Wise Beyond Her Age
11. No One is Too Young For Love
12. Dragon Years (Are Like Accelerated Human Years, So It’s OK)
13. The Age-Related Laws When it Comes to Sex Are Completely Arbitrary, When You Think About It
14. What Does “Consent” Even Mean? Consent From Whom? The Law Is Not Clear
15. The Second Day of School
16. Thug Life
17. Trouble (In Paradise)
18. A Restless Passion
19. Fisting (In Paradise)
20. The Cullens – [Note: This is a chapter I lifted directly from Twilight. I'm cool with this if you are.]
21. The Chapter With the Fighting
22. Theo’s Swollen, Throbbing Boathouse-
23. Epilogue: The Lessons Dragons Teach Us
Author Bio
My name is Daniel O’Brien and I am an Internet Daniel. I’ve been writing semi-professionally for the Internet semi-soberly for the past few years. Writing for the Internet is to literature what aimlessly punching statues in the nuts is to karate, which is to say that it makes me slightly more qualified than your average, mentally disadvantaged homeless man. The only lesson learned in my many years of trudging through the murky, putrid swamp of brain-rot that is the World Wide Web is that I want to stop writing for the Internet as soon as possible, even if it means completely compromising any laughable sense of integrity for the sake of cashing in on the Supernatural Teen Monster Bullshit genre.
 Zeda Ennd · Fri May 28, 2010 @ 04:36am · 0 Comments |
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